On our trip to Turkey, and Greece, we visited the sites of two of the "wonders of the ancient world [1]." The first, was the Colossus of Rhodes, and the second, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
The Colossus of Rhodes was a colossal statue of the Greek god Helios, built on the Greek island of Rhodes between 292 and 280 BC. Before its destruction, the Colossus of Rhodes stood over 107 feet high, which made it one of, if not the tallest, statues in the world. The statue stood for only 54 years until Rhodes was hit by an earthquake in 226 BC. Ptolemy III offered to pay to rebuild it, but the Delphic oracle made the Rhodians believe they had offended Helios, and they never restored the statue. The bronze scrap from the statue was sold off eventually, possibly in the 7th century by invading Arabs. By the time we stood on its site, there was nothing left but the legends.
The temple of Artemis has a little more to show for itself, but not much. The column you see in this photo I took is it. The site of the temple was rediscovered in 1869 by an expedition sponsored by the British Museum. A few further fragments of sculpture were found during the 1904-06 excavations and were assembled and displayed in the "Ephesus Room" of the British Museum. The single remaining column is constructed of dissociated fragments discovered on the site.
Colossus of Rhodes, from a 16th-century engraving by Martin Heemskerck, part of his series of the Seven Wonders of the World. This is a fanciful depiction, based on only the loosest of historical descriptions.
[1] The wonders of the ancient world are:
Great Pyramid of Giza
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus
Colossus of Rhodes
Lighthouse of Alexandria
Wonders of the medieval world (I've seen two - The colosseum in Rome, and the Tower of Pisa):
Stonehenge
Colosseum
Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa
Great Wall of China
Porcelain Tower of Nanjing
Hagia Sophia
Leaning Tower of Pisa
USA Today's "new" seven wonders (plus a viewer voted for eighth). Of these wonders, well, I've used the internet, and flown over the North Pole three times in the last three months:
1
Potala Palace
Lhasa, Tibet, China
2
Old City of Jerusalem
Jerusalem
3
Polar ice caps
Polar regions
4
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
Hawaii, United States
5
Internet
N/A
6
Mayan ruins
Yucatán Peninsula, México
7
Great Migration of Serengeti and Masai Mara
Tanzania and Kenya
8
Grand Canyon (viewer-chosen eighth wonder)
Arizona, United States
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